'Gino' Fever Grips Boston

Mysterious Dancer Captivates Celtics Fans

By

Amol Sharma

Updated June 6, 2008 12:01 a.m. ET

With the NBA Finals under way, Boston Celtics fans are looking for wins. But they also have been searching for the man they call "Gino," a bearded disco dancer who appears in an old "American Bandstand" video that the team regularly plays on its Jumbotron.

The video, taken from a 1977 episode of the show, features dancers showing off the Hustle and other retro moves and is set on any given night to popular tunes of yesteryear.

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Boston Celtics fans know that when this 70s-themed video appears at home games, their team is on the verge of victory.
Eric Kilby via Flickr

The crowd erupts when one particular dancer appears, boogeying by his lonesome in a skin-tight T-shirt that says "Gino." Over time, he has achieved cult status in Beantown: Fans show up in "Gino Time" T-shirts and bust their own disco moves when the clip plays. Celtics players even imitate his arm-swinging dance.

The mysterious man called Gino, who resembles Cat Stevens or Frank Serpico, has become a cult phenomenon not just at courtside but also on the Web, and a kind of alternative mascot. But Gino is one of the accidental celebrities, now common in the Internet era, who become famous for reasons that aren't entirely clear.

In this case, no one is really sure why one dancer in a 30-year-old video packed with bell-bottoms, tall Afros and airplane collars garnered special attention.

But there are theories. "It's just that he's such a creature of the '70s -- such an odd-looking guy," says Ted Tye, a real-estate developer in the Boston area. "And he's got 'Gino' written on his shirt so he's the only identifiable character" in the video.

See a YouTube clip of the "Gino" video played at a Boston Celtics game, complete with fan reaction.

Gino-fan man is also a symbol for New England's love affair with its resurrected basketball team. If the video gets an airing in the Celtics' NBA Finals series with the Los Angeles Lakers, it will be a good sign for Boston fans. It runs only late in games when a Celtics victory is certain -- a nod to an older tradition, when franchise patriarch Red Auerbach used to light up a cigar when a game was under control. Some fans have dubbed the video the "virtual victory cigar."

The Celtics have been using the video for a few years, but it didn't get a mass following because the losing team didn't have many opportunities for disco celebration. This year the Celtics posted the best record in the league, and "the cult of Gino has really taken hold," Rich Gotham, the Celtics' team president, says.

The "Gino" on the dancer's T-shirt refers to the Italian-Canadian pop singer Gino Vannelli, whose 1976 tour paraphernalia includes the shirt worn by the man in the video. Mr. Vannelli says he was surprised when a musician friend told him about the Gino hubbub about six months ago. "It was like taking a weird psychedelic journey," says the 55-year-old.

Fans have been clamoring for months to learn the identity of the man wearing the shirt. "The hell with the real Gino," says one poster on a Celtics blog. "I just want the dancing, Gino fan."

ENLARGE

Musician Gino Vannelli says he has become a Celtics fan because of the phenomenon surrounding his name.
Patti Battista

Some thought they had the Gino fan found. Dave Menachery, a student at MIT's Sloan School of Management, says he was at a game when the cameras spotted a 70s-looking bearded man in the crowd and flashed him up on the Jumbotron. "Everyone started going crazy," he says, "because they all thought it was Gino -- the guy in the T-shirt, I mean."

The Celtics organization initially tried to search for the man several months ago and hoped to bring him to the TD Banknorth Garden for a game, but Mr. Gotham says superstar forward Kevin Garnett told him that might detract from the magic of the ritual. "That would ruin it," he recalls Mr. Garnett telling him. "He could be old and bald and fat now."

Dick Clark Productions, which produced "American Bandstand" until it went off the air in 1989, agreed to help locate the man after being contacted by The Wall Street Journal. The company reviewed old tapes and talked to former dancers to uncover the mystery. One dancer, Terry Izen of East Highlands, Calif., received a call a few weeks ago from another former dancer telling her to check out the Gino video on YouTube.

"I was like, 'Oh my God, it's Joe Massoni!'" says Ms. Izen, who says she is the redhead to the right of him in the video.

Ms. Izen, who is now 52 and is involved in theater, was a regular dancer on "American Bandstand" in the mid-1970s. She says didn't know Mr. Massoni very well but lent him the tight Gino Vannelli T-shirt. But she did remember stopping by his family's Italian restaurant in Rialto, Calif., between shootings one day.

So when she set out to find him, she began calling Rialto's Italian restaurants. No luck. She turned to the white pages of the phone book. On the second try, she reached a woman who said she was Mr. Massoni's brother's mother-in-law.

The news couldn't have been sadder. Mr. Massoni, the woman said, passed away 18 years ago from pneumonia. "I didn't want to burst everybody's bubble because it's been so neat what's been going on in Boston," Ms. Izen said. The Wall Street Journal couldn't independently verify the claim that Mr. Massoni is the deceased dancer. But Dick Clark Productions vouches for Ms. Izen's story. A spokeswoman for the San Bernardino, Calif., coroner's office confirmed that a man named Joseph R. Massoni passed away in 1990 at age 34 in Fontana, Calif. Calls to the residence of Mr. Massoni's brother weren't returned.

"If it's true, we are saddened to hear that news," says the Celtics' Mr. Gotham. "'Gino' has provided a lot of enjoyment for our fans, and his spirit will live on during the NBA Finals."

And thanks to the Internet, Mr. Massoni will be immortalized whether the Celtics win or lose.

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